Data security and transaction integrity are of critical importance to businesses and consumers. This need continues to grow as electronic transactions constitute an increasingly large share of commercial activity. In many retail settings, customers walk into a store and individually select items to be purchased. The customer typically brings those items to a human cashier where the items are scanned one at a time to determine the total cost of the items. A growing majority of such transactions are now electronic transactions.
In some locations, rather than bringing a collection of items to a human cashier, the customer may scan the items themselves. In such situations, a customer individually scans each item and the total cost of the items is determined by an automated register. Customers typically pay for the selected items using a payment card or other form of electronic transaction.
Email may be used as a tool to verify transactions, but email is susceptible to attack and vulnerable to hacking or other unauthorized access. Short message service (SMS) messages may also be used, but that is subject to compromise as well. Moreover, even data encryption algorithms, such as triple DES algorithms, have similar vulnerabilities.
These and other deficiencies exist. Accordingly, there is a need to provide users with an appropriate solution that overcomes these deficiencies to provide data security, authentication, and verification for contactless cards while streamlining the retail purchasing process, enhancing the security of goods, and improving the cost and efficiency of retail transactions. Further, there is a need for both an improved method of recording items to be purchased, managing store inventory, and determining costs.